Research group

Fibre Bragg Gratings

A fibre Bragg grating field test

We design and fabricate passive and active periodic fibre devices, including fibre Bragg gratings, for a variety of applications in photonics.

About

Periodic structures within optical waveguides, including fibre Bragg gratings and other periodic fibre devices, have long been recognised as enabling devices for a whole host of applications in many diverse areas of photonics.

The Fibre Bragg Gratings group has a long history of working with periodic devices and works on most aspects of periodic structures in optical fibres. These range from fundamental studies of photosensitivity in various types of glasses and polymers, over device design, fabrication and characterisation, to applications of gratings within telecommunication, fibre laser and sensing systems.

Our work covers most aspects of Bragg gratings and quasi phase-matching gratings in silica and non-silica fibres for:

  • single-frequency Bragg grating fibre lasers for applications in coherent beam combination, optical sensing, and quantum optics
  • shape-sensing, and detection of extreme dynamic events
  • pulse-shaping, polarisation control, and optical filtering in various fibre laser systems
  • periodically poled fibres for signal processing and switching applications including wavelength conversion and entangled photon generation

The group has laboratories for device fabrication, characterisation and testing within the ORC/ZI. We have several 1D and 2D high-precision airbearing stage systems up to 1 metre in length, and various continuous-wave and pulsed UV laser sources to facilitate writing of periodic structures in both standard silica as well as non-silica-based fibres. We also have access to IR lasers for femto-second inscription of periodic index structures.

External collaborators

Locally in the UK we either have, or have had, collaborations with many of the photonics-based companies based around Southampton, including Fibercore/Humanetics, Woodrow Scientific, and NKT Photonics, and with colleagues at University Hospital Southampton.

Further afield in the UK we also have collaborations with AWE and other UK government organisations.

Internationally, we collaborate with colleagues at DTU in Denmark, PolyU in Hong Kong, and NTU in Singapore.

Research highlights

People, projects, publications and PhDs

People

Dr Morten Ibsen

Associate Professor
Connect with Morten

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